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Identifying Linguistic Cues of Fake News Associated with Cognitive and Affective Processing: Evidence from NeuroIS

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Information Systems and Neuroscience (NeuroIS 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation ((LNISO,volume 43))

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Abstract

False information such as “fake news” is widely believed to influence the opinions of individuals. So far, information systems (IS) literature is lacking a theoretical understanding of how users react and respond to fake news. In this study, we analyze drivers of cognitive and affective processing in terms of linguistic cues. For this purpose, we performed a NeuroIS experiment that involved N = 42 subjects with both eye tracking and heart rate measurements. We find that users spend more cognitive effort (more eye fixations) in assessing the veracity of fake news when it is characterized by better readability and less affective words. In addition, we find that fake news is more likely to trigger affective responses (lower heart rate variability) when it is characterized by a higher degree of analytic writing. Our findings contribute to IS theory by disentangling linguistic cues that help to explain how fake news is processed. The insights can aid researchers and practitioners in designing IS to better counter fake news.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Bernhard Lutz & Dirk Neumann

  2. University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia

    Marc T. P. Adam

  3. ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Stefan Feuerriegel

  4. University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany

    Nicolas Pröllochs

Authors
  1. Bernhard Lutz
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  2. Marc T. P. Adam
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  3. Stefan Feuerriegel
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  4. Nicolas Pröllochs
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  5. Dirk Neumann
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bernhard Lutz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Information Systems and Quantitative Sciences (ISQS), Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Fred D. Davis

  2. University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Steyr, Austria

    René Riedl

  3. Department of Information Systems, University of Liechtenstein, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

    Jan vom Brocke

  4. Department of Information Technology, HEC Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Pierre-Majorique Léger

  5. Department of Information Systems, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA

    Adriane B. Randolph

  6. Department for Digital Business, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Steyr, Austria

    Thomas Fischer

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Lutz, B., Adam, M.T.P., Feuerriegel, S., Pröllochs, N., Neumann, D. (2020). Identifying Linguistic Cues of Fake News Associated with Cognitive and Affective Processing: Evidence from NeuroIS. In: Davis, F.D., Riedl, R., vom Brocke, J., Léger, PM., Randolph, A.B., Fischer, T. (eds) Information Systems and Neuroscience. NeuroIS 2020. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60073-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60073-0_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-60072-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-60073-0

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